I argue the early stage of Cossack activism (late 1980s – 1990s) was a part of shaping Russian civil society. I assume the victim narrative was shaped by the Cossack intellectuals in 1989–90, and it was used politically to ensure that the revived Cossacks were officially recognized as a distinct nation who had suffered under Soviet rule and were entitled to regain their forcibly lost land ownership rights and administrative self-governance of the territory. Furthermore, there is a statement that the division of the Cossack movement into Red and White is not related to the memory of the Civil War, since the anti-Bolshevik victimhood narrative was consensual, but to the issue of public service.